Mitch Morse has been cleared from the concussion protocol after suffering the injury the first day of pads in training camp on July 27.
"Both me and the defender were falling,” Morse recalled. “I was kind of rolling out of it and the ground propelled his knee into the side of my head. I'm telling you man, it's just one of those weird, freak, once-in-a-career hits you take and that's where you come into the 'why the hell is this happening to me?' But you can only control what you can control and that's the toughest thing and that's easier said than done."
It's the fourth known concussion for Morse, but those numbers don't scare him.
"When you get over the fact that if you take care of yourself, I do everything the right way, I know for a fact that I'll be fine in the future,” he said. “When you cope with and come to the realization that if this happens again I'll be fine. And if it happens again after that that's fine. It's just one of those things that you just have to come to a realization with and come to peace with and we are."
That approach is completely counter to the direction the NFL and football as a whole is going regarding head injuries. Morse's beliefs are based off of conversations with many specialists.
"Every single one I talked to said that the outside perception of these things is kind of far off in regards to the fact that if you take care of yourself and don't put yourself out there and do precautionary prevention stuff, if this does happen a few more times it's fine. You'll be fine in the future, just take care of yourself,” he said.
But ultimately time will tell if Morse is taking the right approach.
"No one can 100 percent guarantee anything,” he said. “And the hay's in the barn at this point, also. The truth of the matter is that football is a different game in regards to that. I'm not going to get into the gist of that. I can only speak for myself and I feel very confident that I'm going to be just fine in the future. We've done all the tests you can do and every single one was just tip-top and all the specialists said that I'm going to be just fine."
As for Morse's return on the field, Bills’ coach Sean McDermott believes he's good to go and there won't be trouble inserting him to center, with Morse saying he's spent his time in the protocol taking all the mental reps he can, meeting with coaches and teammates alike to make sure the only rust he'll need to work off will be game-speed.